


"Who Are You?"

by TerribleTerribleOrbs



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Christ, I should have known people shipped the brothers three, I'm mixing up out-of-game character creation and in-game stuff, Like, also, but I'm not HAPPY about it, sort of meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-12-01 23:24:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20933219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerribleTerribleOrbs/pseuds/TerribleTerribleOrbs
Summary: "“Who are you?” They’re the first words he hears, and they come from nothing. There’s only darkness around him, and if he knew what fear was he would be feeling it. Not that he’d let it show, obvs.Back to the question at hand.He isn’t anything, right now. Not yet. Just a quickly growing thought.“I’m an elf,” He says with his brand new mouth. Hey--talking is sort of fun. He’s probably gonna be doing a lot of that.“Cool,” Says the Voice. “Gimme more. Who are you?”"In which Taako is Created by what he can only assume is God.God is a McElroy brother, obviously.





	"Who Are You?"

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So this is weird as fuck! But I haven't seen it before and I thought it could be fun. Mostly just sort of a character study-type thing, I guess.

“Who are you?” They’re the first words he hears, and they come from nothing. There’s only darkness around him, and if he knew what fear was he would be feeling it. Not that he’d let it show, obvs. 

Back to the question at hand.

He isn’t anything, right now. Not yet. Just a quickly growing thought. A thought that twists and shapes and turns into  _ Something _ . And, just like that, he has a body. The body is tall and thin, like is species often is. He has long, pointy ears, and a face predestined to be beautiful. It sort of comes with the whole elf package, ya know?

“I’m an elf,” He says with his brand new mouth. Hey--talking is sort of fun. He’s probably gonna be doing a lot of that.

“Cool,” Says the Voice. “Gimme more. Who are you?” 

The elf thinks, for a moment. “Good question,” He says, tapping his forefinger to his chin. In the silence, he hears it. Not literally. It’s a dim thrumb under his skin, a gentle buzz in his fingertips and chest. It calls to him immediately, and he snaps his fingers. “A wizard, natch.” With those words, a clump of memories seize him all at once. Staying up late, eyes tired and hands shaking, as he finally turns wood to stone. The same spell, deep in the woods with a figure he can’t quite make out, turning wet pebbles into dry kindling. A blurry, practically unintelligible picture of throwing food into the air and turning it from this into that, unnecessary and beautiful and  _ fun _ . 

“Nice,” Says the Voice, and the wizard can feel it nod. “Coolio. Gettin’ those spells bab _ y _ . What’s next?” 

What  _ is _ next? He’s an elf, and he’s a wizard. What more is there? 

“Whatcha’ mean, champ?” He says to the Voice.

“What’s your background?” It says.

And then there’s another feeling, just as deep as the other one. This isn’t the hum of magic, though, more like fire burning in his stomach, an aching in his hands. A need, a want, an aching in his stomach. His mouth waters and his fingers twitch around an invisible knife - not one coated in blood, that ain’t his style - it’s coated in  _ food _ . 

“I cook,” He says. A new swamp of memories, then - standing beside a tall woman who feels like  _ home _ , reluctantly letting her guide his hands above the chopping board. Frantically making food in small, moving kitchens, avoiding senior chefs who can’t cook nearly as well. That same memory as before, crystal clear now, of him throwing sugar into the air and making it rain down as salt instead. Covering a pizza with disgusting toppings before snapping and turning them into sausage and pepperoni and peppers. 

“Cool, neat, that sounds fun,” Says the voice. He gets the distinct feeling that it’s scribbling this all down. “Alright, you know the question.” It says.

“How many more times I gotta answer, hombre?” He asks. 

“We’re almost done,” it responds patiently. 

_ Good _ . Alright, so who is he? Who. Is. He? He feels… Good. Not good like superheroes and firemen and fighters. Good like… he isn’t actively evil. Good like killing evil people is great, but killing good people (by accident) is not so great. It’s a desire to watch over himself above all else, an old instinct squashing all the hero impulses squirming around beneath the weight of it. 

“Sort of, uh, chaotic good?” He says. Memories of happily giving out free food to the people crowded around his wagon, of bile rising in his throat as the realisation of something truly awful he did sinks is, of hating the truly neutral evil fucks he’d seen in caravan after caravan, they all rise to the surface. He takes a moment to catch his breath.

“Ooh, that’s a fun one,” says the Voice. “Alright, now think hard about this one. Who-”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waves his hand dismissively. Who is he? Small things are starting to crawl into his skin now, blueprints of who he is. Armour, invisible and metaphorical, clinging to his skin. Guilt clawing up his throat and nestling there, making each breath short and awful. An incessant want to be out of this terrible spotlight, and an aching need to stay in it. He doesn’t say anything this time, but the Voice moves on anyway.

“We’re almost done,” it repeats. And then it’s voice is all around him, clanging in his ears and filling his nose and mouth, pouring into him. “Who Are You?” it asks. 

And he knows.

“Taako,” he says, and the memories pour over him in an instant. Crystal clear pictures of his aunt teaching him how to cook, of being passed around from family member to family member before fleeing to caravans instead. Of cooking to make himself indispensable, of learning just enough magic to be dangerous. Of starting a cooking show and losing it in the worst way possible, of horror and disgust settling permanently in his stomach. Of cooking assistants and sour cream. 

“Mhm.” The Voice is nodding, now. Taako doesn’t know how he knows this. “Okay,” it says. “One more thing, though - and I won’t fuck up who you are, promise, I just gotta do some stuff real quick.” And then there’s another downpour of memories. Memories of a woman who looks just like him - Lup, his brain supplies - of a century aboard a spaceship and family and the Hunger. It’s all a flash, burning bright and filling him with a million thoughts at once, and then-

It’s gone. He doesn’t remember a moment of it. 

“Okay,” The Voice says. There’s the sound of something rolling around, then, dice hitting tables and numbers being called. He’s smart, he realizes, and dexterous as  _ fuck _ . “Alright, we’re good here, I think.” And then Taako is asleep.

When he wakes, he’s on a slowly rocking wagon moving down a bumpy path. Two other people are with him - they’d just been through the same thing he had - and he doesn’t remember the Voice or the inky darkness from all around him. All he knows is that he’s Taako, the simple idiot wizard. He doesn’t know he’d breathed life into himself, pumping his lungs and heart and blood with memories of a life he’d lived in a second. He doesn’t know that his two partners had just done the same, crafting their own lives and then being thrown into their own. He doesn’t know he’s missing someone very important, missing a century of life.

He’ll figure that last part out, eventually.

  
He’ll never know about the Voice watching him, though. Or that it - the one real God in this whole fucking world - has a name as boring as  _ Griffin.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are very much appreciated :) ALSO - I'm tempted to do this with Merl and Magnus as well. Should I go for it?


End file.
